The United States and Japan will step up their defence cooperation to deal with the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea as tensions in East Asia remain high, officials from the two allies said on Thursday.

Keating's boyhood dream realised in Sydney

It was when former prime minister Paul Keating was just 15, while he watched in disappointment as the old Sydney finger wharves were replaced by yet more concrete, that the first little spark of an idea for Barangaroo Reserve was born.

More than half a century later, standing in the same area, he has seen the idea come to life.

Mr Keating joined NSW Premier Mike Baird on Saturday to officially open Barangaroo Reserve to the public, addressing a crowd of hundreds by the foreshore in the Sydney sunshine.

"This was always the dead part, the grungy part," Mr Keating said of the headland.

"It was lost to us and it's now coming alive."

With the Harbour Bridge as backdrop, Mr Keating said he was "overwhelmed" by the reserve - which in the space of several years has been transformed from a concrete shipping container yard into a naturalistic parkland.

But there were times Mr Keating doubted this dream for the area would ever be realised.

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In 2011, after years of campaigning for the western side of Sydney's central business district to be returned to the public, he resigned as chairman of a key panel set up to oversee the design of the Barangaroo development.